art
DAVID STOLLER
JEWS & AMERICAN MODERNISM II Art Lectures in New Hope On October 26, 1952, Helen Frankenthaler, all of 24 years old, gazed at the large 7’ x 10’ canvas spread out before her on the floor. She intended to draw, but as if being guided by some invisible hand, spread on the canvas turpentine-thinned colors—blue and pink, sea-foam green, salmon and red—and watched as they pooled, stained, and soaked the canvas. She called it “soak and stain,” and her painting Mountain and Sea, in the National Gallery of Art, instantly became a landmark in American modern art, and introduced a new style that was to be called “color field” painting. Frankenthaler’s career flourished over six decades, time enough to launch another major innovation in the art of woodcuts that would change that medium forever.
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Around the same time, Louise Nevelson, twenty years Frankenthaler’s senior and already becoming known for her structural assemblages of recycled wood and her archaic forms—later heralded as the first examples of environmental art—was moving toward larger and larger works. In 1958, her monumental 11’ x 10’ sculpture Sky Cathedral, in MoMA, hit the art world like an explosion. No one had ever seen anything like it—particularly from a woman artist. After a career already spanning three decades, Nevelson took her place among the giants of American sculpture. Over the next three decades, she would continue to produce extraordinary public works that are installed all over the world.
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952, oil and charcoal on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc.
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The Little Shul by the River, Kehilat HaNahar, New Hope’s Reconstructionist synagogue, is presenting Zoom lectures by David Stoller on the lives and careers of these two giants of American modern art, Nevelson on April 10 and Frankenthaler on May 1, continuing its series on “Jews & American Modernism.” The public is invited. To register, email littleshul@kehilathanahar.org. Recordings of the previous lectures on Ben Shahn and Mark Rothko are available at kehilathanahar.org/bagel-u. Please visit kehilathanahar.org for more details on these and other cultural and educational programs. n
Louise Nevelson. Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe.
Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral. ICON |
M A R C H 2 0 2 2 | I C O N D V. C O M
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